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Aaron Swartz, a programmer and Internet activist who co-founded a company that would eventually grow into Reddit, committed suicide Friday in New York City, according to The Tech and Boing Boing. Swartz's attorney confirmed the news to The Tech early Saturday morning.
"The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true," confirmed Swartz' attorney, Elliot R. Peters of Kecker and Van Nest, in an email to The Tech.

"Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, killed one French commando and captured
another during a failed French attempt to rescue Denis Allex, an intelligence
operative who has been in the terror group's custody since 2009."

Witnesses to a failed rescue by French commandos in Somalia describe mayhem, night of terror:

"The night of mayhem and death started with the sound of helicopters above
pitch-black fields. When it was over, the French intelligence agent who had been
held hostage for more than three years was almost certainly dead, as was at
least one French commando, and the home that served as the agent’s final jail
was destroyed. And now the Somalis living in the muddy farm town had new
cause to fear the militants controlling their street."

He is one of the people who created RSS and founded Infogami (which was acquired by Reddit while it was in its startup days, people are incorrectly saying he co-founded Reddit). He suffered from depression and his life has been tumultous to say the least, especially due to criminal charges from his hacking of JSTOR

He is one of the people who created RSS and founded Infogami (which was acquired by Reddit while it was in its startup days, people are incorrectly saying he co-founded Reddit). He suffered from depression and his life has been tumultous to say the least, especially due to criminal charges from his hacking of JSTOR

PARIS - Several hundred thousand people are expected to march through Paris on Sunday against the planned legalization of same-sex marriage in the first mass protest against the unpopular President Francois Hollande.

Strongly backed by the Catholic hierarchy, lay activists have mobilized a hybrid coalition of church-going families, political conservatives, Muslims, evangelicals and even homosexuals opposed to gay marriage for the show of force.

I'm going to post this here since it really isn't "tech news". Some interesting evidence that might be describing alien diatoms that arrived via meteorite. They're fossils, of course, but the argument is that the data suggest the diatoms could not have been fossiled into the stone after arrival. YMMV and peer review in progress, of couse.

Enter Mr. Abe, who has been pressuring the Bank of Japan into seeking higher inflation — in effect, helping to inflate away part of the government’s debt — and has also just announced a large new program of fiscal stimulus. How have the market gods responded?

The answer is, it’s all good. Market measures of expected inflation, which were negative not long ago — the market was expecting deflation to continue — have now moved well into positive territory. But government borrowing costs have hardly changed at all; given the prospect of moderate inflation, this means that Japan’s fiscal outlook has actually improved sharply. True, the foreign-exchange value of the yen has fallen considerably — but that’s actually very good news, and Japanese exporters are cheering.

In short, Mr. Abe has thumbed his nose at orthodoxy, with excellent results.

The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of Raja Pervez Ashraf, the country's prime minister, in connection with a corruption case, officials say.

The court ordered the arrest of PM Ashraf on Tuesday morning, in relation to a case relating to contracts for the purchase of rental power plants by the federal government when Ashraf was the federal minister for water and power.

Sorry for this article being in french but I couldn't find the equivalent in english:
Un jeu vidéo du lobby des armes fait polémique ( A polemical video game from the NRA .)http://techno.lapresse.ca/jeux-video...2_accueil_POS1
Mostly it's the NRA being hypocrite as always.

I'm going to post this here since it really isn't "tech news". Some interesting evidence that might be describing alien diatoms that arrived via meteorite. They're fossils, of course, but the argument is that the data suggest the diatoms could not have been fossiled into the stone after arrival. YMMV and peer review in progress, of couse.

Would be amazing if this turned out to be true. The images certainly look to be biological in origin, but I obviously don't know of whether they could be contaminants. I'd also be very curious where it came from, originally.

That's also the first I've ever heard of the 'red rain' phenomenon... How interesting.